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Business Blogging Mistakes to Avoid at All Costs

If you have decided to make use of the blog attached to your new website then you have made a great decision. Business blogging offers a wide range of benefits to a business of any kind. A blog is a great way to engage current and potential customers, to build your reputation as an authority in your particular field of expertise and the SEO benefits a blog offers are extensive.

There are however some very common mistakes many people make when they begin to blog. Here are some of the most common and the best ways to ensure that you do not make them.

It’s All About You

The Problem:
Every post you add to your blog is about you. Your company, your products, your achievements. Basically every piece celebrates why you are awesome and amazing and the competition is not (if you even bother to acknowledge that your competition exists)Why This is a Mistake:
Just like that man at a party who everyone avoids because he never talks about anything but himself people will begin to avoid your blog in the same way. What value are you offering to them by simple just going on (and on) about how great you company is.The Best Case Scenario:
People look to blogs to inform them, educate them or entertain them and every post you write has to fulfill one of those criteria in some way in order for it to be of any value to your readership.

Ideally every post should also be one that people will want to share, whether they share by email, post a link to their Linkedin, Facebook or Twitter accounts or even link to your great content from their own website.

People are rarely ever going to share self-serving product, service or company based content. But if you offer informative and educational things like industry news, data or opinions, or even if you just make a habit of offering you own insights into the goings on in the industry you operate in in an entertaining and informative way people are more likely to hit that “share this” button.

You Blog Inconsistently

The Problem:
You spent a lot of time creating a blog that looks great, you took the time to integrate into your company website and when you do blog your posts are interesting, entertaining or even both. The only thing is though you only add a post occasionally and weeks can go by before you add new content.

Maybe it is because you lack the time to blog and run your business or maybe it’s just a case of writer’s block but adding content on a regular basis is not something that you are doing.

Why This is a Mistake:
This is a big blogging mistake both from an SEO point of view and for building an engaged and interested audience that one day might become clients or customers.

If you do not add content to your blog on a regular basis the search engine bots have little reason to come and crawl your website again. And the humans will stop visiting your blog as well as you have nothing new to offer them and they will go looking elsewhere for the content that they were expecting you would have been able to provide them with based on your previous work.

The Best Case Scenario:
To make the most of your blog’s potential you need to post on a regular basis. It need not be every day but in at least three times a week is a must. If you do not have the time to take the time out of your day three times a week to blog but you do have one day when you do have that extra time then write all the posts at the same time but then schedule them to go out gradually throughout the week.

Expecting Results Too Soon

The Problem:
You just started a blog for your business, you have been adding content to it on a regular basis and you have all the right social sharing tools in place. However traffic simply isn’t as heavy as you expected. You have some regular readers and a few social shares but you begin to wonder if blogging is really worth the effort and consider giving up.

Why This is a Mistake:
Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither is a strong blog readership. No you are probably not going to see many fruits of your labor in the form of a lot of traffic in just a few weeks and maybe not even for a few months. But giving up on what could be a very good thing for your business too soon may be something you live to regret.

Best Case Scenario:
Give your blog time. Whenever you post something new make sure that you bookmark it yourself. Stumble it, Digg it, Tweet it and share it on all your social media accounts. If you do not have the time to do that consider hiring someone for a few hours a week to do it for you.

Recent changes to search engine algorithms have meant that a lot of the lower quality content that was once able to generate traffic by just using a tactic like keyword stuffing have been rendered obsolete. More than ever original and engaging content is what search engines and humans are looking for and to paraphrase a classic baseball movie “if you write it, they will come”.